1) I didn't see any need for Finn and Rose to be masters of the minutiae of First Order tracking tech. Especially Finn, given his background. There were plenty of other ways to set up that plot. (But I do appreciate the way that they never explain what is going on with Maz Kanata's blaster fight; it was just taken as a given that when you call her up that's what she'll be up to.)

2) Frankly, the whole casino thing could have been shortened. And how is it that nobody in the Resistance leadership has thought of keeping some master code-breakers on the payroll, so it falls to a few insubordinate personnel to go to a casino and find a code breaker?

3) The insubordination plot, and the subsequent forgiveness, was way over the top. Frankly, the kid gloves that Vice Admiral Holdo used with Poe undercut their efforts to build her up as Strong Female Supporting Character. If they were bound and determined to have Poe be insubordinate to that degree she should have had him arrested pretty much immediately.

It would have made more sense if she had been the one who had ordered the mission to recruit a code breaker from the casino planet, ordered Poe to do some sort of diversion (maybe even pretending to be insubordinate to maintainaa cover), and then volunteered for a suicide mission at the end (with some sort of speech about duty) when her gambit failed.

4) Some of the Luke-Rey scenes could have been shortened.

5) Rose was a fine character, and the actress did a fine job, but some of the exposition that they gave her (mostly on the casino planet, but also when she initially sets up that plotline) was just clunky. Again, I am not faulting Kelly Marie Tran, I am faulting the writers.

On the plus side, Rey was no longer stretching out suspension of disbelief. (That was what the insubordination plotline was for.)

"ike Wile E. Coyote salivating over a "4000 Ways To Prepare Roadrunner" cookbook without watching his surroundings, the Road Runner of Societal Inertia snuck up on them both and beepbeeped them off the mesa."
--Shem

I'm pretty much in accord with you, thoreau. I enjoyed the movie while I was watching it, and would recommend it as a fun movie to others, but I have a lot of complaints.

1. The Finn-Rose storyline was super pointless. They go to this random planet (which just happens to be close enough to reach in time and on their limited fuel?) to see a random codebreaker (with nothing to offer him to entice him). They go stumbling into this super fancy casino looking all scruffy and obviously out of place, get arrested for stupid reasons, and just HAPPEN to find another codebreaker (why is the dude in jail in the first place if he can wander out? For that matter, why did they get arrested if their crime was a parking violation and they're poor scum -- wouldn't they just get thrown off the planet instead?). They just happen to be able to ride space horses and the police just happen to lose track of them. Then they sneak onto the bad guys' ship and their plan gets foiled. Okay, says I, this is going to be one of those things where they think they failed, but then it turns out it's good they're on the ship so they can find some other crucial piece of information or be on hand to help in one of the other plotlines. Nope! They almost die but don't and then go back to the rebels, the end. Completely pointless from beginning to end. Except that their codebreaker cut a deal and got a bunch of rebels killed. So basically it would have been a million times better if they had just stayed with the fleet in the first place.

2. OH MY FUCKING GOD WHY DID LAURA DERN NOT TELL POE ABOUT HER PLAN TO ESCAPE TO THE REBEL BASE????????? There was ZERO reason for her to not tell him, especially when he launched a mutiny. It was all completely contrived for false drama. HOLY SHIT THIS PISSED ME OFF

3. Speaking of Laura Dern, I wish we would have gotten to see more of the relationship between her and Leia. I love the idea of these two older women having been through so much together. I wish I could have gotten to see or hear some of that instead of just a goodbye scene of them staring tenderly at each other and clutching each other's hands.

5. What was the point of ANY of the "siege of the Rebel base" fight scene if they're just going to blast a hole in the door at the end anyway? Why have the drawn out Finn kamikaze scene if Rose was going to swoop in at the last minute? "That's how we're going to win. Not destroying what we hate. Saving what we love." Okay lady but they have a miniature Death Star and your statement makes no sense

6. Agree that Rose's character was disappointing, especially with the clunky casino planet dialogue. I was really hopeful at the beginning that she'd be a great funny character ("doing ... talking ...") but then they just didn't give her anything to work with.

7. Luke and Rey stuff on the island went on too long. Did he ever teach her the third lesson? (Confession: I mixed up the backstories of Rey and Jyn from Rogue One so I was really confused about all of her "searching for my parents" angst.)

Anyway. I liked a lot of the small things, like the penguin-things taking over the Falcon and building a nest, and Luke drinking the blue milk, and R2 playing the Leia recording for Luke, and Leia's line about "I've changed my hair," and Yoda teasing Luke about never having read the sacred texts. I loved the true story of what happened between Luke and Kylo the night Kylo tried to kill him. I also really liked Yoda's comment that was something like, "That's our burden as masters. We have what they grow past needing."

I'm weirdly drawn to Rey's wardrobe with the sleeveless tops and the arm bands, and am wondering if I can pull it off in real life.

Also, obviously Luke had to astrally project himself to Kylo Ren so he could die in front of himself and get a ghost body:

The Luke Side of the Force
by Lore Sjöberg

So last night I'm watching "Return of the Jedi: Now With Fakey-Looking Computerized Creatures Instead of Fakey-Looking Rubber Creatures," which I got for Christmas, and I noticed that Lucas hasn't fixed the main non-Ewok problem with the movie: the fact that the final battle between Luke and Vader makes no sense.

Here we have Luke "Badass" Skywalker, Jedi Extraordinaire. He's mown down Stormtroopers like bowling pins on bumper night, sliced open Imperial Walkers, and given the Death Star a photon colonic once already, not to mention all the womp rats he must have massacred. He's built his own lightsaber, raided Johnny Cash's closet, and watched his Jedi master snuff it. At long last he's brought before the Grand Imperial Old Guy himself, who's sitting there giving off smarm rays, and Luke decides, for no apparent reason, that killing the Emperor -- this one guy -- would tip him over the edge into the yawning abyss of Jedi perdition. I don't get it.

There's always the "defenseless" explanation, but that doesn't cut it. He could blow up everyone in the Death Star 1.0 in one force-guided shot, but he couldn't kill one guy in Death Star 2.0? If he had left, grabbed an X-Wing and blown up the whole damn battlestation that would have been Yoda-Kosher, but taking him one-on-one is bad juju? Not to mention the fact that when Darth offs the Emperor, that turns him into a good guy.

I have a better explanation. The fact is that, throughout the three films, everyone Luke meets is completely bullshitting him about the Force. They make up all this crap about Dark and Light and Good and Evil to disguise that there's only one rule to the Force: die in front of Luke.

Let's rewind to the first movie. Obi-Wan is facing it off with the Sith Lord. They play lightsaber pattycake for a while, and then Luke shows up. Obi-Wan looks over as if to say "Oh, good. Luke's here. Now I can die," and gives the fuck up. Darth, not having noticed Luke's presence, delivers the killing blow, and Obi-Wan gets a magical ghost body.

Then in "Empire," Obi's feeling pretty good about himself and decides to let his old friend Yoda in on some of this spirit-form action. He sends Luke to Dagobah, but how to keep him there until Yoda's ready to shuffle off this mortal sequel? No prob, just make Luke Yoda's "student" and provide him "training." A couple dumb levitation tricks will keep Luke wide-eyed while nature wracks Yoda's withered old latex body. You'll notice that when Luke decides to save his friends Yoda and Ben get all mystical and start making prophesies, none of which come true. They're not seeing the future, they're just trying to get Luke to stay put.

Now we're back to "Jedi." Luckily, Luke still hasn't seen through the plan, and he shows up just in time for Yoda to kick the Muppet bucket. Score one for Yoda, he gets a magical ghost body.

Then, there's the Final Battle. Emperor Palpatine doesn't have the subtlety of the rest of the Jedi gang, so he just says "Hey. Kill me." What he doesn't realize is that Luke is the goodwill ambassador for reverse psychology, and so Luke, just to be contrary, doesn't. Palpatine gets pissed off and decides that if he can't have a magical ghost body, nobody can. Darth, seeing his only chance for a cool afterlife being fried in front of his eyes, has a great plan. He grabs the wrinkled old Imperial coot and throws him down a convenient Tunnel O' Energy, out of Luke-death range. This has the double effect of ruining the Emperor's plans ("I was getting really tired of him anyway," thinks Darth) and putting Vader on this last legs. He plays on the maudlin "father" thing to get Luke to take off the helmet, and dies in front of him. Ta-da!

So there you go. Lucas tries to make you think that the Star Wars Trilogy is a re-telling of ancient tales dragged up from the collective unconscious, with lessons for us all about good and evil, hubris and loyalty, when it's really just a story about a bunch of guys who want to die in front of Luke.

I agree on the casino subplot, though I found Boyega and Tran so charming that it was hard to get too upset about it. I wish they had just had the two of them bond while trying to keep the cruiser going, or something.

(But I do appreciate the way that they never explain what is going on with Maz Kanata's blaster fight; it was just taken as a given that when you call her up that's what she'll be up to.)

Also, that apparently Maz fucks. Humans. Somehow.

And how is it that nobody in the Resistance leadership has thought of keeping some master code-breakers on the payroll, so it falls to a few insubordinate personnel to go to a casino and find a code breaker?

I assume they're dead. Those three ships are all that's left of the Resistance, after all.

Frankly, the kid gloves that Vice Admiral Holdo used with Poe undercut their efforts to build her up as Strong Female Supporting Character. If they were bound and determined to have Poe be insubordinate to that degree she should have had him arrested pretty much immediately.

I took that as a mixture of not wanting to do anything that would force her to bust him down too much, and a hope that he'd pull something if that'd help. I mean, until the mutiny scene, most of what he did would have been forgivable if he had been a success. And that came on pretty fast, from her perspective.

On the plus side, Rey was no longer stretching out suspension of disbelief.

I always saw her success at the end of TFA as being more a function of Kylo's complete lack of resolve more than her skill, as such. He's shitty at what he's doing because a big part of him would just as soon not be doing it. Rey, on the other hand, is perfectly resolved to do what she's doing, and it gives her the edge.

2. OH MY FUCKING GOD WHY DID LAURA DERN NOT TELL POE ABOUT HER PLAN TO ESCAPE TO THE REBEL BASE????????? There was ZERO reason for her to not tell him, especially when he launched a mutiny. It was all completely contrived for false drama. HOLY SHIT THIS PISSED ME OFF

A high ranking officer responding to requests for an explanation with "fuck you, that's why" actually seemed like one of the more realistic points of characterization to me, but that might come from hearing it from one too many retired generals.

5. What was the point of ANY of the "siege of the Rebel base" fight scene if they're just going to blast a hole in the door at the end anyway? Why have the drawn out Finn kamikaze scene if Rose was going to swoop in at the last minute? "That's how we're going to win. Not destroying what we hate. Saving what we love." Okay lady but they have a miniature Death Star and your statement makes no sense

The point is that you can do everything right, but if the dice don't land right, you're still fucked.

I think my favorite part was the chemistry between Ridley and Driver, and setting them up as foils for each other to help them stop doing what other people want them to do and start figuring out what they want. I really hope they don't wind up being related, because I don't trust Kylo Ren not to lie about her parentage, and I've already been squicked by retroactive incest subplots by this series.

"VOTE SHEMOCRACY! You will only have to do it once!" -Loyalty Officer Aresen

2. OH MY FUCKING GOD WHY DID LAURA DERN NOT TELL POE ABOUT HER PLAN TO ESCAPE TO THE REBEL BASE????????? There was ZERO reason for her to not tell him, especially when he launched a mutiny. It was all completely contrived for false drama. HOLY SHIT THIS PISSED ME OFF

A high ranking officer responding to requests for an explanation with "fuck you, that's why" actually seemed like one of the more realistic points of characterization to me, but that might come from hearing it from one too many retired generals.

True, it just seemed like a terrible decision. Carrying the Idiot Ball. When your subordinate is freaking out to the point of mutiny because they think you have no plan of escape, and you have a plan of escape, why would you kick over an oxygen tank (or whatever that was) and start shooting up your hangar bay, instead of saying, "Dude, dial it back, we're not totally fucked like you think we are. And by the way, see if you can get Finn and Rose back here ASAP, because we don't need them to disable the tracker after all."

Her refusal to explain herself does not bother me. Her decision to not put him in the brig way earlier in the movie does bother me.

But, really, here's what they should have done if they wanted to keep their set-pieces but have a plot that made sense:

1) "Wait, they tracked us through light speed? They must have a spy on the ship!"

2) "Captain Dameron, here's a chance to redeem yourself: I'm working on a survival plan, but I need you to launch a diversion. And because we have a spy on the ship, you need to make it look like your diversion was done without my authorization, so the spy will tell the First Order that your diversion is unsanctioned."

There, they get all the same set-pieces, but without the Admiral seeming too weak to arrest an insubordinate flyboy and without Finn and Rose having to do a ton of exposition on First Order tracking tech.

"ike Wile E. Coyote salivating over a "4000 Ways To Prepare Roadrunner" cookbook without watching his surroundings, the Road Runner of Societal Inertia snuck up on them both and beepbeeped them off the mesa."
--Shem

i like how they didn't bother explaining snoke and all that. it's cheesed some people off pretty hard (judging by twitter) but it's nice to see something which doesn't need backstory and explanations and all that sort of garbage that plotzi culture generates.

I don't understand why everyone gets so pissed off that *random backstory* didn't get shoehorned into the movie. It's not like we won't have a tetralogy about that time Snoke started wearing a fedora in college and went all "Men Going Their Own Way" because he realized what he really wanted was to be playing with other guys' lightsabers.

"VOTE SHEMOCRACY! You will only have to do it once!" -Loyalty Officer Aresen

Shem wrote:I don't understand why everyone gets so pissed off that *random backstory* didn't get shoehorned into the movie. It's not like we won't have a tetralogy about that time Snoke started wearing a fedora in college and went all "Men Going Their Own Way" because he realized what he really wanted was to be playing with other guy's lightsabers.

Shit, there's probably a self-published eleven volume epic about how one of the extras in the background of a deleted scene in Empire Strikes Back was a spy for whatever organization Snoke was in back then.

"ike Wile E. Coyote salivating over a "4000 Ways To Prepare Roadrunner" cookbook without watching his surroundings, the Road Runner of Societal Inertia snuck up on them both and beepbeeped them off the mesa."
--Shem

This is an awesome thread that continues to update. Here's what I saw when I posted:

SCENE: The First Order I.T. department
Tech 1: Shouldn't we encrypt the comms so some rando can't just hail the bridge?
Tech 2: I don't have time, I have to repair ANOTHER fucking terminal Kylo Ren trashed.
Tech 1: Jesus
Tech 2: What did they say about your proposal to move the bridge into the center of the ship, so all the officers and navigators aren't separated from opposing fighters by a single pane of glass?
Tech 1: They were like, "But how will we see space?"
Tech 2: Did you explain about video cameras?
Tech 1: Sure did
Tech 1: Do we have to build the fusion reactor under the giant circular bullseye looking thing on the hull? maybe we could move that somewhere else and stick a bunch of extra armor under it?

"ike Wile E. Coyote salivating over a "4000 Ways To Prepare Roadrunner" cookbook without watching his surroundings, the Road Runner of Societal Inertia snuck up on them both and beepbeeped them off the mesa."
--Shem

What I want to know is how did the code breaker know about the cloaked ship? No one on Snoke’s ship knew about it.

Other major plot hole, why don’t they do more hyperspace to destroy the super weapon move more often. ROTJ would have ended a lot faster that way.

ETA: And another thing. Why do these fucking ships have bridges on the outside? It's too easy to cut the head off the snake. Frankly the movie would have been cool if the rebels escaped and Rey and Kylo Ren just killed all of Snokes guards and they ran the credits. Just skip Hoth II: Chandelier Fox Boogaloo

He heard Poe's frantic call to Spacevictor Bout's ship where he said that they were getting ready to abandon ship.

The crash wouldn't have worked on the Death Star, because the size would have meant having to crash two or three cruisers to even have an effect beyond minor damage. Remember, Executor crashed into the Death Star to no serious effect. Higher velocity would have made it worse, but going in with fighters meant they could trigger a chain reaction.

"VOTE SHEMOCRACY! You will only have to do it once!" -Loyalty Officer Aresen

He heard Poe's frantic call to Spacevictor Bout's ship where he said that they were getting ready to abandon ship.

The crash wouldn't have worked on the Death Star, because the size would have meant having to crash two or three cruisers to even have an effect beyond minor damage. Remember, Executor crashed into the Death Star to no serious effect. Higher velocity would have made it worse, but going in with fighters meant they could trigger a chain reaction.

Yeah, you will note that it didn't actually obliterate the Supremacy, just cut it in half.

I also agree with FFF that people who complained about backstory are morons. Star Wars got ruined by building backstory. Based on the 1st 3 movies, what was the emperor’s backstory/motive and how was it more fleshed out than the Snoke backstory

his voice is so soothing, but why do conspiracy nuts always sound like Batman and Robin solving one of Riddler's puzzles out loud? - fod